Tigger:Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: Tigger: timujin: It may not be "perpetual", but it looks like it'll run for quite a while. If you can use it to generate power, which seems pretty straightforward, it'll be a hell of a cheap source.

Guess what happens when you rig it up to a generator.

Explosion? I'm not an expert.

It will stop because of the resistance introduced by the generator.

Yep. If you've ever done anything with wind-powered generators, one of the first things they tell you is NEVER to allow the blades to spin unless the generator is hooked up to it. If you do, the blades will spin too fast, and that can be dangerous. The generator itself creates enough resistance to slow the blades down to a safe level, even as the windmill generates power. The same thing would happen here: a generator would slow down the rotation, probably enough to stop the machine completely.

The laws of thermodynamics don't actually render perpetual motion truly impossible. What's impossible is extracting energy from such a device. In practical terms, this means that if a perpetual motion machine exists, then it cannot produce any heat, light, electrical current, or even sound. If it does, then energy must be "leaking" out of the system to produce those things, and so the machine will eventually run out of energy and stop. You could add energy to the system in some way to keep it going, but then it wouldn't be a perpetual motion machine.

Lumpmoose:It would have take into account the cost of rare-earth metals and how often the magnets have to be replaced. Prices have fallen recently but by definition, mineral-based energy is not renewable.

OK, I won't go into why motors that use only peramanent magnets can't do any work, but what do you think happens to magnets when they lose their magnetism? They don't evaporate. The rare earth elements are still there. They can be re-magnetized. Yes, that does take energy, but my point is that the rare metals can be reused indefinitely.

People that think the only thing keeping things like this from working are the magnets wearing out really need to get their head checked.

If I were to create a device where an object rolled down a hill, then a mechanism at the end pushed the object back to the top, would you believe that this device would keep running forever? Of course not, it's obvious that to push the object back to the top the system needs some kind of external force applied, even if we're clever and only have to worry about overcoming frictional losses.

Why, then, are people so inclined to believe that magnetic force behaves any differently from gravitational force? After all, all this device does is create a "hill" of magnetism. The rotor is driven by the magnets to a position where it has the lowest amount of potential energy, and then the lifter pushes the bar magnet away ever so slightly while the rotor turns back to the starting position with the highest potential energy. Do you believe that lift takes less energy than was used to spin the rotor in the first place? Why? Are you functionally retarded?

So yeah, obvious hoax is obvious. I had seen this before and wasn't clear on the how, I assumed a small motor hidden in the side supports. The air nozzle though, that's brilliant.

RatOmeter:timujin: It may not be "perpetual", but it looks like it'll run for quite a while. If you can use it to generate power, which seems pretty straightforward, it'll be a hell of a cheap source.

Hmmmm, you "work for a company that puts robots on other planets" and you seriously entertained the thought that some useful energy could be extracted from that thing (before the hoax revelation, of course)? I hope you aren't directly responsible for applying physics at work ;)

Yes I do,. No, not "seriously", had I been serious I would have taken the time to find out of it was real or a hoax,. And, no, I'm not, thankfully. It's never been something I've ever studied, a giant hole in my education really.

So, due to that, I'm still not sure why (if, in reality, you could make something spin for any real length of time using magnets) it would be any more difficult to have it spin a generator than it is to do so with a wind or watermill as long as the force created by the magnets was greater than the opposing force created by the generator.

/I mean, technically, you could hook this up to a tiny generator (DC motor) and "create" power, since it's really just a very, very inefficient windmill.

timujin:I mean, technically, you could hook this up to a tiny generator (DC motor) and "create" power, since it's really just a very, very inefficient windmill.

Are you forgetting the "this is a hoax" part?

But, for all those PM machines that do actually run for a long time, you will find that the time that the time they run is inversely proportional to the amount of work you get out of them. Rendering them useless for power generation.

Admitting: as a kid I was snared by the "power of magnets." I tried all sorts of things, within my limited resources, to break through the mystery of magnetics. Then I got older, was taught a little, read a lot, then mostly understood.

Recently my own son has been berating me about "why do you think magnets can't work [such and such way]?" I try to tell him in terms of the Laws, but I guess I haven't devised and given proper demonstrations yet. And he hasn't finished 6th grade.

Speaking of interesting machines (so this isn't a total threadjack), but does anybody have a link to that video of the engineer who rigged up this swinging-bar contraption that would balance itself along a moving track? I think it was posted on Fark within that past couple years. He does it with a rigid bar connected to a motor on a horizontal track. Initially the bar is hanging below the track and whatever sensors he's hooked up allow the motor to swing the bar back and forth until it's upright. He then does it with a bar that has a swiveling joint in the middle, so the machine has to make significantly more movements to get it upright. I remember posting in the thread, but I can't seem to find it. THANK YOU.

xelnia:Speaking of interesting machines (so this isn't a total threadjack), but does anybody have a link to that video of the engineer who rigged up this swinging-bar contraption that would balance itself along a moving track? I think it was posted on Fark within that past couple years. He does it with a rigid bar connected to a motor on a horizontal track. Initially the bar is hanging below the track and whatever sensors he's hooked up allow the motor to swing the bar back and forth until it's upright. He then does it with a bar that has a swiveling joint in the middle, so the machine has to make significantly more movements to get it upright. I remember posting in the thread, but I can't seem to find it. THANK YOU.

Not sure if this is the video you were looking for, but what your describing sounds like a double or triple inverted pendulum.

CrissX:xelnia: Speaking of interesting machines (so this isn't a total threadjack), but does anybody have a link to that video of the engineer who rigged up this swinging-bar contraption that would balance itself along a moving track? I think it was posted on Fark within that past couple years. He does it with a rigid bar connected to a motor on a horizontal track. Initially the bar is hanging below the track and whatever sensors he's hooked up allow the motor to swing the bar back and forth until it's upright. He then does it with a bar that has a swiveling joint in the middle, so the machine has to make significantly more movements to get it upright. I remember posting in the thread, but I can't seem to find it. THANK YOU.

Not sure if this is the video you were looking for, but what your describing sounds like a double or triple inverted pendulum.

xelnia:CrissX: xelnia: Speaking of interesting machines (so this isn't a total threadjack), but does anybody have a link to that video of the engineer who rigged up this swinging-bar contraption that would balance itself along a moving track? I think it was posted on Fark within that past couple years. He does it with a rigid bar connected to a motor on a horizontal track. Initially the bar is hanging below the track and whatever sensors he's hooked up allow the motor to swing the bar back and forth until it's upright. He then does it with a bar that has a swiveling joint in the middle, so the machine has to make significantly more movements to get it upright. I remember posting in the thread, but I can't seem to find it. THANK YOU.

Not sure if this is the video you were looking for, but what your describing sounds like a double or triple inverted pendulum.

CrissX:xelnia: Speaking of interesting machines (so this isn't a total threadjack), but does anybody have a link to that video of the engineer who rigged up this swinging-bar contraption that would balance itself along a moving track? I think it was posted on Fark within that past couple years. He does it with a rigid bar connected to a motor on a horizontal track. Initially the bar is hanging below the track and whatever sensors he's hooked up allow the motor to swing the bar back and forth until it's upright. He then does it with a bar that has a swiveling joint in the middle, so the machine has to make significantly more movements to get it upright. I remember posting in the thread, but I can't seem to find it. THANK YOU.

Not sure if this is the video you were looking for, but what your describing sounds like a double or triple inverted pendulum.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyN-CRNrb3E

gahhhhh horrible flashbacks to my controls class..... never did get a single pendulum somewhat stable let alone 3.

Rezurok:People that think the only thing keeping things like this from working are the magnets wearing out really need to get their head checked.

If I were to create a device where an object rolled down a hill, then a mechanism at the end pushed the object back to the top, would you believe that this device would keep running forever? Of course not, it's obvious that to push the object back to the top the system needs some kind of external force applied, even if we're clever and only have to worry about overcoming frictional losses.

Why, then, are people so inclined to believe that magnetic force behaves any differently from gravitational force? After all, all this device does is create a "hill" of magnetism. The rotor is driven by the magnets to a position where it has the lowest amount of potential energy, and then the lifter pushes the bar magnet away ever so slightly while the rotor turns back to the starting position with the highest potential energy. Do you believe that lift takes less energy than was used to spin the rotor in the first place? Why? Are you functionally retarded?

So yeah, obvious hoax is obvious. I had seen this before and wasn't clear on the how, I assumed a small motor hidden in the side supports. The air nozzle though, that's brilliant.

I was thinking it was some combination of springs, elastic bands, and counterweights.

DrGunsforHands:Rezurok: People that think the only thing keeping things like this from working are the magnets wearing out really need to get their head checked.

If I were to create a device where an object rolled down a hill, then a mechanism at the end pushed the object back to the top, would you believe that this device would keep running forever? Of course not, it's obvious that to push the object back to the top the system needs some kind of external force applied, even if we're clever and only have to worry about overcoming frictional losses.

Why, then, are people so inclined to believe that magnetic force behaves any differently from gravitational force? After all, all this device does is create a "hill" of magnetism. The rotor is driven by the magnets to a position where it has the lowest amount of potential energy, and then the lifter pushes the bar magnet away ever so slightly while the rotor turns back to the starting position with the highest potential energy. Do you believe that lift takes less energy than was used to spin the rotor in the first place? Why? Are you functionally retarded?

So yeah, obvious hoax is obvious. I had seen this before and wasn't clear on the how, I assumed a small motor hidden in the side supports. The air nozzle though, that's brilliant.

I was thinking it was some combination of springs, elastic bands, and counterweights.

I was thinking it was something like maxwells demon. (except magnetic)